So, you want to take 10 or 15 years off your face. You’ve tried anti-aging creams. You’ve tried facials. You’ve tried meditation. You haven’t been out in the sun without sunscreen ever.

Yet your skin still sags. Your jawline becomes droopy. Deep creases run from your nose down to your mouth.

Could be time to find a genie. Or to get a facelift from Dr. Smith.

Facelifts rejuvenate the mid- to lower face and neck by tightening muscle, removing fat, and trimming excess skin. It generally thought that a facelift will take from 10 to 15 years off of your facial aging.

What a facelift addresses

If you have the following issues with facial aging, a facelift could benefit you:

• Deep creases under the eyes
• Deep nasolabial folds
• Jowls due to sagging muscles
• Midface sagging
• Loose skin and fat under the chin and jaw
• Sagging areas of fat

You need to know that facelifts do nothing for the brow, eyelids, nose, and much of the upper midface. To address these areas the patient either needs a brow lift or eyelid surgery.

Three most common facelift incisions

Traditional facelift

This is the “full” facelift for rejuvenating the face, jowls, and neck. The incision begins at the temple on each side of the face and moves downward to the front of the ear, moving around the earlobe, and ending in the hairline of the lower scalp. If there is a good deal of sagging under the chin, Dr. Smith may make another incision there.

Once the incision is made, the skin is lifted and the fat is removed or sculpted, muscles are lifted and repositioned, skin is re-draped and then trimmed.

Limited-incision facelift

As you would assume, a limited-incision facelift is less extensive. It targets the areas around the eyes and mouth. Short incisions are made at the temples and around the ear. Other small incisions can be made in the lower eyelids and under the upper lip.

Neck lift

A neck lift, while technically its own procedure, is often combined with a facelift. It concentrates on jowls, loose skin on the neck, and fat deposits under the chin. Here the incision is made around the ear lobe and behind the ear to the lower scalp.

Still looking for that genie? Maybe it’s time to give Dr. Smith a call at 843-705-8940 to talk about a facelift.